The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security (BTS) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been charged with tracking the whereabouts of visitors to the United States. The Bureau tracks visitors such as foreign exchange students, foreign business travelers, and others that have been issued a limited visa. A system to provide information necessary to positively identify and locate those individuals is required.
The Patriot Act of 2001 requires monitoring of the vast number of foreign students and increased the need for information sharing for critical infrastructure protection. Therefore, a need further exists to protect the borders of the United States form unauthorized immigration.
One method of verifying individuals involves the use of biometric technology. Biometric technology employs are automated methods for identifying or verifying the identity of an individual based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. These characteristics include fingerprints, vocal recognition, facial characteristics and eye recognition. Normally, biometric technology is used in situations requiring highly secure personal authentication.
Prior art biometric technology is capable of verifying a client's identity by using previously recording voice samples. The voice samples may include words or phrases can include an individual's name, location, or a random set of numbers. Known biometric systems compare the individual's spoken voice sample to that of the recorded voice samples to verify the identity of the individual. However, prior art systems can only verify the identity of the individual.
Prior art systems allow a computer system interfaced with the public telephone network to detect from the incoming telephone call automatic number identification (ANI) data. ANI data identifies the phone number of the calling telephone and a computer system in conjunction with the ANI can be used to generate reports of the incoming telephone calls.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,646,839 to Katz discusses a computer system that detects ANI data from incoming telephone calls. The system of Katz accepts personal identification codes from the caller and generates reports of the location of the calling telephone and the person making the telephone call.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,223,156 B1 to Goldberg et al. disclosed a system that increases the accuracy of recognizing a set of spoken numbers and letters. The system of Goldberg reads a telephone number received with the telephone call and location information associated with the caller. A database identifies callers having a particular zip code or area code. A processor determines if spoken numbers and letters match a retrieved record.
U.S. Patent Pub. No. U.S. 2003/0229492 A1 to Nolan discloses a method of identity verification which employs a database containing registered biometric samples of users.